Edinburgh has its fair share of icons...the castle, Holyrood, the Royal Mile. Despite its glorious history, for a long time, Manchester had Old Trafford and Coronation Street - even though neither of them is in Manchester.

Manchester trams

Network
23 miles of track linking Bury in the North West, Altrincham in the south, and Eccles in the north east to Manchester city centre.

Cost
Just over £300m.

Opened
By the Queen in 1992.

Passengers
Carries almost 20m passengers a year.

Owner
Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive.

Operator
Operated under a management contract by Stagecoach.

Future plans
Extensions to Oldham and Rochdale, East Manchester and Ashton under Lyne, and South Manchester and the Airport will open between next year and 2016.

But all that changed in 1992 when the Queen opened Metrolink - Britain's first new tram system for forty years. Now, whenever you see a TV clip of Manchester - there will be a tram in it.

My first memory (I was the transport correspondent of the Manchester Evening News) is of feeling rather pleased with myself when, long before the opening, a deep throat tipped me off that they would be testing for the very first time one of the new Italian-built trams on the city centre tracks in the dead of night so nobody could see.

Excitedly, I turned out with a photographer at 3am....only to find the city centre teeming with enthusiasts from all over the country.

And for all the pain now, Edinburgh will get that same attention as opening approaches. Whether it is the continental effect, I don't know, but people take to trams like they never do buses.Initially, all we had was one line from Bury in the north to Altrincham in the South on old railway lines, linked across the city with newly-laid tramlines. There was a small issue with the resin on the track bed not setting because if the Manchester rain, but generally, most things were forgiven in those early days.

A third line to the shiny new skyscrapers of the Salford Quays district and on to Eccles wasn't far behind but already, Mancunian eyes were trained on something even bigger and better.

The Big Bang

I was called to the offices of Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive - which owns the network and issues contracts to operate it - to be ''recruited'' to the ''big bang'' plan to build three extensions at once rather than one at a time.

The editor agreed and it became an M.E.N. cause célèbre. And being back in the days of editorial budgets, I was actually authorized to spend some money in support of the PTE's attempts to persuade the government to hand over millions for the Big Bang.

So when Princess Anne opened the Midlands Metro, I hired a plane to tow a banner in the skies above the ceremony proclaiming: "Don't forget Manchester's Metrolink". I also had car stickers made up which said: "I'd rather be riding Metrolink". When John Prescott visited, I gave him two…but bottled out of telling him there was one for each Jag.

The money came through and, of course, we claimed all the credit.Then along came Alastair Darling as Transport Secretary – the latest in a long line of holders of that post who had little interest in it. He cancelled Big Bang on the grounds that the costs had risen so much (thanks to the UK's stupid planning system which delays any worthwhile project for decades).

By the time the government came to its senses, it was another passer-by Transport Secretary, Douglas Alexander, who had his picture taken in front of a Metrolink tram announcing that Big Bang would go ahead after all.

We flirted with congestion charging which was roundly rejected by the population but Big Bang somehow survived the withdrawal of Transport Innovation Fund money and we are now less than a year away from the opening of the first leg of the first extension.

Manchester Matters Photograph: Alan Salter/guardian.co.uk

Of course, we have had to order a few more trams …this time from Austria as the original 32-strong Italian fleet has proved as eccentric as the Fiat Strada …but despite the pale imitations in Sheffield, Croydon, Birmingham and others, Manchester's Metrolink will always be the system which brought trams back to Britain.Alan Salter is managing director of TransportMatters Ltd and editor of Manchester Matters, a free online magazine which launches today. Register at www.manchestermatters.co.uk.

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